Revitalising politics: have we lost the plot?

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Description/Abstract

In this framing paper for the special issue as a whole, the authors review existing attempts to diagnose and respond to the condition of political disaffection and disengagement afflicting our democratic polities. They caution against an overemphasis on measures to address declining turnout - which they see as a symptom of a more general condition. That condition, they suggest, is the development and inadvertent nurturing of a profoundly anti-political culture. Such a diagnosis suggests: (i) the need for political elites to acknowledge how implicated they are in the crisis of democratic politics; (ii) that constitutional reform does not hold the key to a solution; (iii) that a revitalised politics must deal more adequately with the multi-level character of modern politics; and (iv) that any strategy for revitalising our politics must build from a genuine understanding of how citizens understand and orient themselves to politics.